Exclusive: Poisoned — New Zombie Horror from Israel

Poisoned is a zombie comedy, filmed in Israel by David Lubetzky ( דידי לובצקי ) and currently in the final editing stages.

Synopsis (short):

What makes this night different from all nights?

On this night, the army really marches on its stomach! Passover at the base can be a real blow. Especially if you are a custodian stuck with a psychopathic commander, you’re high school crush has suddenly arrived and all the soldiers have become flesh-eating zombies.

But who’s not used to suffering at the Seder?

Synopsis (long):

Bino Aharonovitch is a legendary Israeli war hero. His son Danny (David Shaul, pictured on right below)) is far from it. He does his national service as an assistant custodian in a remote base which serves as the home base of “Nachlieli” (the Wagtail) — one of the IDF’s elite units. He spends his days avoiding the violent soldiers and his OCD captain.

But on Passover night, the worst night for an Israeli custodian, his life is about to change. His high-school crush Maya (Orna Shifris) arrives to deliver vaccines to the fighters. She mistakes Danny for one of the fighters and shows interest in him for the first time. Danny keeps up the lie, but fate has different plans. The vaccine makes the elite troops turn into flesh-eating zombies who go on killing the rest of the soldiers in the base.

Danny, being the only one left uninfected, runs for his life — until he finds out that he isn’t the only survivor. Used to avoiding conflict, he now realizes that this time there is no escape.

Danny is going to have to utilize his only skills in order to save himself and his love — gardening skills!

Undead Backbrain spoke to the director David Lubetzky (pictured above, on set) about the film:

I am the writer, director and co-producer of Poisoned. The movie is a 50-min long zombie comedy set in the Israeli army. It began as an idea for a feature film written by me and my friends at the Tel Aviv University Film School. We decided, with the support of the university and a couple of public funds in Israel, to pursue making this complicated film as a university project — although it remains mostly an independent and self-financed film.

The script was written as a cross-genre film, combining a unique style of Israeli cult comedies and the zombie genre with all its conventions. The basis of the story is a coming-of-age story, set in an environment unique to Israel. Plus – zombies. The zombie genre until late didn’t exist in Israeli cinema. (We are now witnessing a renaissance in horror films, especially zombies. Coincidence? I don’t know). Through this combination, the film brings a new take on the genre, and hopefully has an appeal to both local and international viewers.

I have a lot of love for horror genre, and producing Poisoned was influenced by a few of the genre’s icons such as Shaun of the Dead, Evil Dead, Neil Marshal’s early work, and of course most of Romero’s body of work.

Since the movie has a parody tone to it, we nod at many other movies such as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Die Hard, Scarface and even Blade, along with many Israeli comedy classics.

These days I am working on developing another horror comedy in the same genre.

By why is it called Poisoned?

The name “Poisoned” is a translation of the Israeli army slang word “Muralim”, meaning the love of the army and/or unit beyond anything else. As in “This guy loves the army; he is really poisoned”, for example.